Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Brad Bourgoyne's digital drawings

I learnt something new today; digital drawing.

Trying to draw with a mouse is extremely difficult and the results usually look a bit like drawings by Lowry, you know, rather bad but not bad on purpose. For a couple of years I have been thinking of getting a graphics pen and now I think I must.

I made a friend today with Brad Bourgoyne a sculptor from LA. I spotted a rather good remark he made on the sculpture Forum and so looked at his website; great stuff, I recommend a visit, link below. I especially like the fact that he draws and he has uploaded some very good drawings to his website. I noticed however that there were two categories, graphite drawings and digital drawings. This intrigued me. So I asked him what it was all about and this is his un-edited reply:

My digital drawings usually start on paper in graphite, which I then scan and re-work in Photoshop using a Wacom graphics pad and stylus (instead of a mouse). The big advantage of digital is the freedom to experiment, "save file" then "undo", and re-work compositions-- you can totally change a drawing or combine it with others with total control.

Sometimes I scan finished pencil drawings that I rework very little, sometimes they start as a series of simple sketches that I overlay and radically alter. Digitally, I have access to a larger range of effects and "brushes" --from "air brush" to "pencil"--than would be convenient to have handy physically. Also, I can push and pull the tactile qualities of the original scanned pencil marks, lightening or darkening, etc, maintaining the original qualities while emphasizing some other compositional aspect. Also, digital work can be printed as editioned Giclee pigment prints at any size, which can be very beautiful.The critical limitation of digital media is obvious--it doesn't have the physicality of real media. I don't like to try to simulate real media digitally (it’s never as interesting as the real thing), and there is something intuitive about a pencil on paper that cannot be replicated digitally-- not to mention the visual qualities of graphite.

So that's why I start with the real thing first, even if I end up playing with it digitally. And of course, there is also no unique original. And that’s why I ultimately prefer graphite on paper when I'm just drawing for myself.I call any drawing that has been manipulated in the computer a "digital drawing" just because it is simpler than they to distinguish all the degrees of manipulation.

So yes, there are advantages of digital over graphite, but also of graphite over digital. It’s just another media, with different possibilities, and I search for the strengths of each when I use them. I think of it as a new form of printmaking.
Brad

Here can be found an example of one of Brad’s digital drawings.
http://www.bradmichaelbourgoyne.com/drawings/drawingD06.htm

His video animation is very interesting too.

His website is at
http://www.bradmichaelbourgoyne.com/BourgoyneSculptures_home.html

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Sunday, November 26, 2006

Spring Flowers start to grow November 2006

Is this more evidence that things are going haywire in climate? Daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses and hyacinths are all pushing up above ground. One daffodil is 5 inches high already. We haven’t had a frost here yet and it is the 26 November 2006.

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Camera broken


Summer is long gone but I found this picture of a French visitor from last August. As our summers get hotter due to climate change, we are attracting more and more hot (and cold) weather visitors.

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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Dorset Stone Sculptor, Mike Chapman



I hope you like Mike's work. This one is at the top of the steps into St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. It is amazingly simple and was commissioned for the Millenium in 2000.

"And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us"
St. John 1, 1:14



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Sunday, November 19, 2006

German Sculpture?


I am loathed to put my head above the parapet in this very healthy discussion over the merits of German sculpture, but I’ll risk it!

I remember a very “Teutonic” wooden sculpture which had been looted from a large country house in Germany at the end of WW2 but because of its Nazi connections the owners refused to accept it back again. It was therefore given to the regiment where it remains to this day having travelled around the world a couple of times. It is of a young adult couple kissing, not particularly erotic but enough to fire up a few young bachelors no doubt.

Artistically it is not in the same league as this picture here, but because of the style I assumed that this one here was also German of about the same vintage; mid 1930s. Can anyone identify it?

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Thursday, November 16, 2006

Not so crazy aims


I think we should all have an idea where we would like to be in 10 years time I too hope it happens in 2, great stuff and Good luck Jo, I think quite a lot of us have the same aim. Have a look at http://www.crazygoals.co.uk/main.aspx?pg=featuredgoal.aspx@@@IDGoal=66779

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Professor Reinhold Hohl - he can not be serious.

Just sometimes I see red. My family would say often, as “grumpy old male syndrome” has kicked in early for me.

But this takes the biscuit. I won’t come to blows over it but I couldn’t agree to disagree. Umm, a bit like that one “I can not stand intolerance of any kind”!

One of the great and good, a Professor Reinhold Hohl has come up with this statement on the Henri Matisse's works below: but as McEnroe would say “He can not be serious”.



The “error” as (Gauguin said), of the Greek Sculptors from 480 BC on, was undone! What the art of sculpture lost in “fleshly” realism was regained a hundred fold in sculptural reality.






Greek 460 BC












I must have misunderstood them.

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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Pre Picassan Brotherhood

I have come across an important seed which needs nurture. They have an important point which is gaining ground but not found the “Art Establishment” yet.

The Pre-Picassan Brotherhood by Laura Alport

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We have all been taught in our art history classes that the great subjects have been exhausted, that there is "nothing new under the sun." That epic or transcendent imagery is not relevant to our situation. The Brotherhood apparently missed that day.
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Visit; http://geocities.com/milesmathis/bro.html

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